This is my old development blog for my project Cube World.
There is now an official site: picroma.com.
The game is still in development and not available for download. Be careful of fake downloads.

2012/10/26

Cube World City Screenshots

Just a short status update about the new name: I already have a new favorite but I'd like to wait a little, maybe there's a better one.

Currently I'm working on the following things:

The Cube World is divided into different lands (of course randomly generated ones). Each land has a level and all creatures living in that land have the same level. The land level increases with distance from the starting position.

Each land has a capital city and is inhabited by NPCs. They have quests, sell items or just talk about random stuff. :) Each city has a center place where all shops and other useful buildings are located.

In contrast to before, buildings are now randomly generated: they now have varying rooms, sizes, walls, roofs etc. Furthermore, I'm working on multiple themes. Here are the ones that I have finished so far:

I must say this looks really good ! But on the second screen shot of North American style wood houses, the terrain goes up in circles in a very regular patern, whitch does'nt make it look very random. ! this is just a constructive comment, the game looks realy nice.

Very Nice ! Perhaps you could get king of every city by doing a lot for it as a far goal. Also then you could build a castle in the late game and start events where groups of enemys try to attack your castle. Much fun in multiplayer. :)

Or in multiplayer two or more players could be foes, build a castle and fight agains another with mercanarys.

very nice!. Sounds like it's using the mob level system that 3079 has where enemies steadily increase in power the farther you venture out but also the loot is superior too. With an infinite levelling system, this is perfect!

Depending on how you've implemented the building variants to work it would be nice if in a log house town you had some houses using a Different log house color scheme. Like in log house town they are all dark browns but maybe a few houses have some tan or lighter wood patterns in it. Felt that might be a nice plus to the variation.

1 - Far west style (these can go to the desert)2 - Viking Style.3 - Antic Greece Style.4 - Caribbean Style (may be this one has to be right a side on a beach)5 - Elves style (these can go to the jungle bioms, like random generated houses on the trees or something like that, with stairs of course)6 - Blacksmith style (for those lands cover of lava could be great)

There you have some ideas, may be you can take one or two ; ) (sorry my english,,,)

PD.: Oh, i almost forgot... There can be Gangan Style xD!!!! Just kidding LOL

Even if not boats- maybe the people of cube world use pets like pokemon for travel (not pokemon of course, but an example of animals for water travel). Having some kind of animal transit would be cool. Maybe like big turtles or something.

Awesome, thought about adding an eastern theme? Pagodas and such? or even adding towns that have been attacked and are in ruins? Would set up more quests for players quite easily (gather resources to repair the town, defend the town, kill big bad boss man etc etc

1 - Venice style (a city +/- awashed, meaning that you have to make it in the middle of a lake or something)

2 - Atlantis style (well, this has to be totally under water; only can go to this place after some very high level; and when you reach that level, you must do some very hard quest where you can earn some equipment to go underwater for longer, if you understand me)

3 - Steam Style (you know, medieval and moderm style with steam technologies; but this one could go to the air, some floating city must be in this game; and to reach this kind of cities, you have to do pretty much the same as the Atlantis cities; very high level, hard quest to get some "jet pack"?, or somethink like it; I know that there already exist the Hang gliders, but you need more power to get to this floating cities, if i make sence -.-)

Dunno, may be it is too damn hard to do this. You already have an unique game, but adding this things, will make history for ever and ever :D

Would it be possible to kill NPC's, or would there be quests in which you could have a 'friendly fight' (or a deathmatch) with a NPC? I can imagine it being useful for new players to be able to practise combat within the 'safe' confines of a village.

Speaking of interaction with NPC's, it would be nice if you could have an 'allegiance' with a village, or individual inhabitants, which could result in people willing to follow you and help in combat/carrying items if you do quests for them, and perhaps attack on sight if you have aggressed against them in the past. I think that would really make the villages really come 'alive', rather than just quest dispensers.

At any rate, nice screenshots. I really like how you are making a great deal of progress, even though you are just working as a team of two.

"Each land has a level and all creatures living in that land have the same level. The land level increases with distance from the starting position."

This is awesome! The one reason I hated Skyrim and Oblivion was that everything just scaled to whatever your level was. There was no way to go find easier or more difficult foes. The only thing you could do with those games was slide up the difficulty bar. I love this new approach.

and since there is unlimited terain generation and no max lvl there is no end to game.... imagine what lvl you be from few years of constant leveling, not like some games u reach max and rest is just grind for stuf (gear,gold)

Yeah stat values add a precarious feature to the way the game works. It is a good system for games but it is definitely flawed. Screws things up and takes away the realism to entertainment value. Mostly because like playing skyrim you come to a point where it feels like your character isn't really worth more then the sum of his stat bar lengths which magically make him more powerful. It can be implemented and smoothed out well to work, but I think games should aim for a new direction here.

Still, cube world already has health bar/mana bar perhaps stat implements already. It isn't bad just. Flawed as I said. If you try the game Overgrowth you'll see what zero stats and health bar implementation combat is like. It is Much more paced and intense. Something like demon/dark souls as well makes a good example of combat capability being more important then the stats and bar lengths. Though it still has a heavy stat influence in there.

EDIT: Just one last time :PI'd still like suggest something like "Spirits & Legends" or maybe something that captures a little more of how vast the game is and the epic free form adventures you have like "Endless Legends". My final suggestion is "Myths and Monsters"

I'd suggest putting further comments on the previous posts about the name change. Just because if that conversation spurs here it'll lose all track of any other comments people make on the housing stuff and we've got some good ideas down in the comments too!

That is if he still looks at those posts. Not sure if he checks back at previous comment sections. It'd be helpful if he could notify us on that :o Either way just helpful I would suppose.

You should add a randomly generated building (maybe one per town) that is fairly big (maybe even with a deserted look) inside, it is a dungeon that has unique items depending on what themed town it it. You should also make nomadic settlements that roam the land changing position.

P.S. You should some kind of underwater town you can only reach when you are certain level.

Perhaps it will be possible, but soon some people will try to destroy, brake through these houses or start to put graffiti on them. Maybe also grand counsel of the city will try to judge you, and put you to jail or try to catch with local guards and army!

Great idea, now that we got gliders, we could get to floating islands in Pandora style, or to get things harder, to cities hidden in some clouds. Unfortunately, every cloud should be inhabited, becaouse it would be impossible to get to cloud cities above deserts, or looking for cities from cloud to cloud. It would be boring. But perhaps we could see location of cloud cities in dreams?

Maybe things like dungeons or monsters in places more obscure like caves could be occasionally generated at a higher level, and places in forests or plains could occasionally be done so at a small area of lower level. Get some variation in the areas like that.

That kinda looks like something between Myst and LotR, though it is a little tame for LotR buildings. Tree houses systems would definitely be cool. Still there is probably considerable work involved in adding new zones and villages and he probably has a sizable chunk of work still cut out for him. Not sure how much we can suggest more of this stuff.

i love the look of this game,seems to play like a dream, can you make like a tent as a like portable bed, and inns to sleep in. i think it would open up role playing options, say like a nomadic warrior sleeping in a tent, or a city born assasin that takes refuge in inns. i think that would make this game a bit better. also maybe a different spirit cube, lightning, when you use a special move, it arcs to 2 or 3 different targets dealing a set damage.

About me & Contact

This is my development blog for Cube World and Plasma. If you have any questions, send me an email: wollay@picroma.com
Please understand that I can't answer all emails, especially with questions answered in the FAQ. :)